Grant: Grassroots Regular

A Grassroots Regular grant supports you in developing, implementing and evaluating your idea for changing your teaching practice.

Grassroots Regular offers:

• Funding. You will receive between €2,500 and €7,000 per project. The amount depends on the scope and complexity of your proposal and is determined by the committee.
• Support with the content and process of your project, both during the project and after completion, when sharing knowledge and supporting adoption.

Are you curious about previous projects? Check out the archive for projects themed AI, internationalisation, and flexible education.

View the archive

Criteria

Your idea must meet several criteria:

• Your idea focuses on improving education through an ICT application.
• Your idea may be entirely new or build on an existing application, but it must not be a repetition of a previous project. Therefore, we ask you to review current and previous Grassroots projects. If you’re still unsure whether your idea is too similar, please email Sjoukje at grassroots@uva.nl.
• An evidence-informed proposal is an advantage.
• You formulate a learning objective that contributes to your students’ learning process.
• If your Grassroots project involves processing personal data, you must pay attention to privacy and ensure that the data is processed correctly.
• If you are applying as a student, a lecturer must be associated with your Grassroots project.

Procedure

• You can apply for a Grassroots grant each year. The application round for 26-27 runs from 1 December 2026 until 30 January 2027.
• The results will be announced in mid-March 2027.
• If you are awarded a grant, you are expected to attend:
  • the Innovation Festival on Thursday 1 April 2027, from 15:00 to 17:00. At this event, both new grant holders and those who have completed their projects pitch their plans or results to one another;
  • the Innovation Community Drinks at Thursday 23 September 2027 in the afternoon.
• You will receive support with the content and process of your project.
• During your final evaluation, content will be collected for a one-off blog post about your project.

Did you know that in addition to the Grassroots grant, there’s also Grassroots+? This grant is for lecturers who have previously innovated their teaching with a promising ICT application through an education grant.

Does this apply to you? And do you want to scale up this innovation within the UvA, so that other lecturers, programmes, and/or faculties can benefit? Then the Grassroots+ grant is for you! This grant supports lecturers with a maximum of €9,000 to broaden the application of their innovative ICT projects. Read more about Grassroots+.

• What can I use the grant for?

You can use the budget for costs that directly contribute to your Grassroots project. Examples include:

• • hiring a student assistant
  • attending an event to gain knowledge (e.g., a symposium)
  • IT resources

Please note: This grant cannot be used to extend an employment contract or to fund activities or resources that are already covered by regular faculty funding.
If you are unsure whether an expense fits within the scope of your project, please contact Sjoukje Kerman in advance.

• Can I submit a proposal together with others?

Cooperation is encouraged. Grant holders can learn a lot from each other and we like to see people who are working on the same educational innovation finding each other. This way, not every lecturer or programme has to reinvent the wheel. That is why we offer the possibility for several lecturers to submit a proposal together. The requested budget is linked to the number of courses and/or programmes in which an innovation will be implemented. This way, you have more to spend and efforts can be pooled.

• How are the proposals evaluated?

The selection committee consists of five members from the TLC Network and ICT Services. It assesses proposals against the criteria listed above.

• How is the grant funding transferred?

Grant funding is transferred to the WBS number of the degree programme or faculty. Costs associated with the Grassroots project can be charged to this number.

Please Note: Students can claim the costs incurred on the declaration form ‘staff not in employment’.